A Cancer in the Organization

When I left the company run by one of New York's Worst Bosses, I was hired immediately by a well respected not-for-profit that was run by two co-Executive Directors: clinical and business management. The latter of the two became my boss.

During my interview, the clinical Executive Director warned me that my soon-to-be-boss told off-color jokes. I assured her that it didn't bother me in the slightest. I had, in fact, met him at a a Broadway show where he introduced himself as a proctologist. Not all that funny but whatever.

Everything at this job went fairly smoothly. He would leave around 11:00 a.m. every day to go to lunch and come back to the office around 3:00 p.m. drunk. Because he left me alone to do my job, his behavior didn't actually bother me at all. And the majority of his sexual innuendos were stated in front of others presumably for comedic effect. They usually elicited a chuckle from me.

One day he took me and my girlfriend, who was then working for People magazine, to lunch and began peppering us with all sorts of questions like "where is the wildest place you've ever had sex?" (She later confided in me that she made all of her answers up because her real life sounded too boring.) It was a strange lunch but not, for whatever reason, alarming. I think because he seemed so benign at the time -- and I was just grateful to be in a relatively stress-free environment.

A few weeks later, our institute held a black-tie, fund raising event at the University Club after which he invited me for drinks. I declined. The next day, he came into work still in his tuxedo and shared with me that he had gone to a neighborhood bar, picked up two young girls, went back to their hotel room and had a threesome. "You should have come with me."

Please note: this man had a wife and young baby in CT.

Finally, I started getting the creeps. He then began asking me to lunch and I kept putting him off until one Friday, I agreed, under the premise that we were going to talk about my performance and possible new initiatives.

We sat down at a two-person table with banquette seating. There were customers dining at tables on either side of us who were so close that they could have joined in the conversation. Instead, they just listened in.

My boss then proceeded to tell me that he loves making sexual comments in front of others because my chest heaves (ew!) and that he fantasizes about "doing me" in the Board room. Why I continued eating, I'll never know. What else was said, I cannot remember. I just remember the silence at the tables on either side of us. And his silence when I finally stood up and quit.

For whatever reason, we walked back to the building together in silence, and then road the elevator together with the silence punctured by my co-worker Lisa's friendly, "Hi guys!" greeting as we joined her.

Lisa later shared with me that I was one of a long string of women hired for that position. Same story; different girl.

She also shared with me that, after I left, this same man brought in a package of rub-on tattoos and told the entire staff that whoever put a tattoo in the most interesting place on his/her body would get a day off. He then sat in his office and screened the results, one-by-one, behind closed doors.

Needless to say, he was ultimately fired but I still can't imagine why he wasn't let go much sooner. When I told my story to the other Executive Director, her only comment was, "I warned you." No, you didn't. In my opinion, off-color jokes are vastly different than sexual harassment. Both, however, may qualify for dismissal.

I wonder what, if anything, he was holding over her head.

The Devil Wears Issey Miyake

My husband got "The Devil Wears Prada" DVD out of the library for me last week. Although I had read the book when it first came out, I was reluctant to watch the movie out of deep-seated fear that it would cause further nightmarish flashbacks of my ex-bosses. I'm thankful to report that enough time has passed where I am now, officially, flashback-free. I'm also embarrassed to report that it felt somewhat tame, to me.

One of my least favorite bosses was highlighted this spring on Gawker's online poll entitled, New York's Worst Boss. I didn't bother to enter my comments given they had so much disturbing fodder already; however, since she didn't win, I'm regretting my omission.

On my first day at this horrific firm, my boss looked me up and down and ordered that I get my hair cut and colored at her salon and that her assistant take me out shopping for new clothes. It was as if I interviewed well and then arrived at the office looking like Jerri Blank.

After I was hired, I was never directly spoken to again unless it was over the phone. Literally. She would relay messages to me through people while we all sat in the same room . It's almost comical if it wasn't so demeaning!

Lunches were free and catered daily. I had access to a car and driver but preferred to walk to work every day. However, we were expected to be at work from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. five days a week and to be "on call" all weekend. One Sunday, after an early morning conference call, I went to hang up and head off to church. My boss' comment? "If I had known you were a Christian, I would never have hired you." What a shocker.

After hours, the housekeepers would walk around with a tray of wine -- but everyone was forewarned to drink only the white in case, heaven forbid, any spilled. The owner, meanwhile, was out every night with famous politicians, luminaries and celebrities and would arrive home night after night stinkin' drunk.

This company had zero processes in place and employees were literally expected to be mind readers. The staff were supposed to pack the "briefcases" of the leadership team with information they may find useful -- even if they didn't attend the meetings and had no idea what any particular project entailed.

The owner would scream at people in the office if she got an incoming call and she didn't have information at her fingertips about the caller. "Why didn't someone run up here and give me a file on George Fisher?" Perhaps because we didn't know he would call? Maybe she should have hired Nostradamus . . .

One night she had dinner with two women from New Jersey as a favor to a client. The next day, she couldn't stop marveling aloud at their idiocies like the fact that they a) wore nude hose (how embarrassing!) and b) put an actual tape recorder on the table (vs. discretely using a miniature recorder). Needless to say, she was mortified to have been in public with them.

The company was a revolving door -- mainly of wealthy, young socialites. One really funny woman that I worked with (and who went to Switzerland on weekends to ski, as one does) kept vowing to "take her down." She had a plan, she claimed, that would ruin my boss' life for ever. It finally amounted to her FedEx'ing a package to one of our clients with damaging documents. Nothing ever came of it except, I found out months later, that I (me!) was framed for the act and my boss was, in turn, trying to take me down. No one remaining on staff had the guts to stick up for me, at the time, because they were worried that she would read between the lines and know that the entire company knew about "the plan."

When I finally resigned, my boss threw my resignation letter on my desk and stormed out of the building. No one would look at me for fear of what I could possibly have done wrong. Later that afternoon, I got a call from HR. "I understand that you attempted to resign but your resignation has been declined."

What? Nice try!